Dems' Hot Buttons Aren't Working

That question was popular during the Vietnam War era and has resonance to today's Democratic Party.

None of the usual hot buttons are working anymore in the face of an inflationary disaster and a looming recession.

Abortion? The Court has done the unthinkable: Overturn Roe. This nightmare has kept Democrats in anxiety and anguish for fifty years and now it is has passed. But the explosion of anger and resentment and fear the party expected to accompany such a decision seems not to be happening. Polls suggest that voters see the reasonableness in asking pregnant women to decide to abort during the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy.

What once seemed to be an extreme position now appears to be something of a compromise. A few crazies may raid anti-abortion clinics, but the average voter doesn't much care. He and she is too focused on making ends meet financially to go on a jihad.

Nor does gun control, even in the wake of the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings, cause Democrats to rally much. Voters see the disconnect between school shootings and mugging on the street. And it's unlikely that the Court decision holding that the Second Amendment permits carrying of guns in public will make people forget what they experience each day at the gas station.'

The efforts of the January 6th Commission to bring to life images of what they hope the country will see as a Trump coup d'etat are doing nothing to inflame the bulk of the electorate.

In fact, the longer the Commission hearings continue, the more they resemble Republican efforts to rivet national attention on Bill Clinton's sex life during the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment trial. The longer they go on, the more it becomes evident that the Democrats won't deal with America's very real problems but would rather dwell on their fantasies about January 6th.

For fifty years, the Democrats have gotten votes and raised money from the hot button issues of guns and abortion. But now, as the midterms approach, they frantically pound on the hot button but nothing happens. The wires have been disconnected; the electrical circuit broken.

They just don't work anymore.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.